Between national parks, we stopped to visit friends Doug and Melanie as they prep their new homebase (an rv, of course) deep in the northern Chihuahua Desert.
We drove seven miles down a dirt road with no development in sight to get to this park outside Deming, New Mexico, where Doug and Melanie have bought an RV and leased a lot.
They call this plan their “storage with benefits.” You might remember that they travel and live in an off-road tent/trailer contraption,
so for them an RV on a lot with a storage shed makes sense as a place to travel back and forth from.
This rv park is more like an iconic wagon camp out of the old Wild West. Rocks provide the borders for roads and paths, blooming cholla, agave, and purple prickly pear cacti are ornaments. Mule deer come in to graze each evening, and cottontails, jackrabbits, and quail dart through the low creosote.
We’ve been helping Doug and Melanie renovate their RV before they move their stuff in, but Melanie and I took a short walk one afternoon over the hills above this valley so I could get a better view.
It’s profoundly peaceful.
And surprisingly beautiful in ways only a desert can be.
We also took time for beers and reminiscing about all the times we’ve crossed paths over the years,
from the first time we met them, when they stopped their (former) Airstream in the Anza-Borrego desert in Southern California to ask us how firm the sand was for boondocking,
to the summer we went on hikes through the Yukon and Alaska together.
Change is the undercurrent of our lives, and it means the world to us that these friends are a fixture in that undercurrent. Here we got to share in the evolution of their nomadic lifestyle, and always we enjoy the feeling of connection with them over and over when our paths cross. What an honor.
And what a hilarious plaid-wearing bunch we are!
Good friends are hard to find. Good friends who share a love of the nomadic lifestyle, even more so. I’m glad you’re able to meet up with them so often! And I love the pink cacti.
Thanks! That’s a purple prickly pear, I believe. A worthy name!
I love everything about this… good friends, beer and unexpected desert beauty.
💕
We even shared beers they’d bought us in Alaska that we’d been storing under the bed all this way. It was grand.
Good friends and good times! Just wonderful. I love your line, ‘The desert is profoundly beautiful in ways only a desert can be.’ A harsh beauty I imagine.
Where does the RV Park gets its water? Bores? (Can you tell I work for a WaterGov?!)
I’ve been to deserts in Central Australia and I found it personally rather challenging (and beautiful in that desert way!) I felt mortal – eg you could die if you had a breakdown and no water. Apparently some city folks get panic attacks from the open space. Even the hot dry wind felt harsh on my skin. But the sunsets/sunrises, clear skies, critter tracks, harsh beauty. It was a fabulous experience.
I think desert beauty has a lot to do with subtlety. The longer you spend in the desert, the more life you notice and the more changes you see during day and night and the seasons. Deserts make you look harder and see more.
I don’t know about the water at that park – good question. They’re actually not terribly far from a town. I know they conserve, and they might have a tank.
I love vast undeveloped land, although I’ll take mountains over desert. It’s people I feel weird about, ha!